A temporary weekday bus schedule will be active from Wednesday 25 August until further notice, in response to the ACT’s evolving COVID-19 public health situation.
Following the snap lockdown on Thursday 12 August, public transport patronage has reduced to approximately 10% of 2019 levels. Furthermore, over 80 bus drivers were in quarantine as at 20 August.
Minister for Transport and City Services Chris Steel said the interim timetable would mirror the standard summer holiday timetable, stating that these efforts will “improve reliability by reducing the risk of dropped services”. The lockdown timetable can be found here.
“At the moment we are seeing major impacts to the reliability of bus services because of the growing number of drivers required to comply with ACT Health directions,” Mr Steel said.
“We remind Canberrans to only use public transport for essential reasons during this time, and if you have COVID-19 symptoms, please do not travel on public transport.”
The interim bus timetable will see the Rapid 10 running at least every 30 minutes, and all other Rapids running at least every 15 minutes until 8pm during the week.
Weekend services will remain the same and the light rail will continue to run on its regular frequency.
Dedicated school bus services will not run while the interim timetable is in place.
This is in response to patronage on dedicated school services having reduced to around 40 daily trips, compared to thousands on the day prior to the ACT lockdown.
Essential workers whose children use the dedicated school bus service and are continuing to go to school were advised to contact their schools to inform them of transport requirements.
Transport Canberra specified that they would collaborate with ACT Education and independent schools to collate this information and organise tailored transport using the flexible bus fleet.
“Our public transport patronage figures show that Canberrans are clearly doing the right thing and staying home wherever possible, and we’d like to say a huge thank you to the community for that,” Mr Steel said.
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